First Look: Salvadoran Standout Travels From the Bronx to the Beach

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Rincon Centroamericano, an offshoot of the Pupusa Loca chain, spent ten years at 163rd Street in the Bronx until one day its rickety building was condemned and it was forced out without notice. Owner Regina Ayala, a native of El Salvador’s La Liberdad region, had trouble finding cheap rent even in the BX, but luckily her sister, who lived an hour away in Rockaway Park, clued her into the former home of a Jamaican restaurant, and the restaurant has now reopened under the name La Joya de Ceren (after an ancient farming village preserved by volcanic ash). Heck, we might just travel from the Bronx to Rockaway just to try the seviche (see it for yourself in our slideshow) — to say nothing of the pupusas, a relative rarity in this taco-mad city.

As for the space, the front bar is waiting for its license to sell Gallo beers (in the meantime, horchata as well as cashew, barley, and a variety of other juices are fit to be toted a couple of blocks to the beach), and the gigantic fireplace in the side room will eventually be powered with gas. Here’s the menu, pending some tweaks. Interestingly enough, the paper version includes calorie counts, so you know your pupusa with loroco flower and cheese is 400 calories while the tripe soup is 306 (don’t worry — nothing’s over 1,000).